Our mission is to find the best unpublished short mystery – one that fits into legendary crime writer Margery’s definition of what makes a great story:

“The Mystery remains box-shaped, at once a prison and a refuge. Its four walls are, roughly, a Crime, a Mystery, an Enquiry and a Conclusion with an Element of Satisfaction in it.”

The way a submitted story matches this definition is awarded greater weighting in the scoring than any other criteria.
Closing date: 6pm GMT Friday 26 February 2021.

Entries Now Open for 2021.

The international competition is open to all – both published and unpublished authors from all over the world – and is for short stories of up to 3,500 words. All that we ask is that the story has not been previously published anywhere, or shortlisted for this competition.

Read more about the competition and see the submission portal on the left.

Entries cost £12. See below for prizes.

How to Write a Winning Story

We asked a former winner of the CWA/Margery Allingham Short Story competition for 6 great tips and here they are:

• Read the great short stories (not just crime fiction) and ask yourself what makes them great
• Don’t kid yourself that writing a short story is much easier than writing a novel
• Think about the effect you want the story to have on the reader
• The opening needs to arrest attention
• The end must leave the reader with a sense of satisfaction
• Between the beginning and the end – don’t waste a word

Want to promote the competition? Download an A5 PDF flyer here.

Congratulations to the 2020 winner

Della Millward – A Time to Confess

Highly commended
Lauren Everdell – Voices
Laila Murphy – Sting in the Tail

Shortlist 2020

Congratulations to our shortlisted authors. We’ll be announcing the winner very soon.

Longlist 2020

Congratulations to our longlisted writers. We will announce the shortlist and the winner over the coming weeks. We’ll post the dates here as soon as we have them.